The project attempts to rethink the relationship between the urban grid system and the housing typology—the constraints of the urban grid limit housing typologies. With respect to the uniform order in the urban system, few variations in housing typology limit more requirements on human life in the contemporary city, which gives a chance for housing complex to set up solitary buildings separated from the urban environment. The tension between housing typology and the urban grid system has reached a dilemma in the balance between the city environment and human life. The Canal Community speculates a dynamic housing typology on a new complementary urban system.
As a result of the industrial decay, the previous vitality in this Gowanus canal area has gone and left land underutilized. The devalued land under the existing urban order needs to be improved to achieve vitality and prosperity with two goals: 1. challenge the old urban system by new complementary system surrounding the canal; 2. propose a relatively dynamic dwelling environment to accommodate the complexity of human life. The Canal Community will set up a new urban order, which improves the living quality and shape a new community identity in Gowanus.
The Canal Community proposes new typologies with respect to the new urban order. These typologies are consequently synthesized in one coherent system. The design process requires the negotiation and resolution of the tension between forms and spital systems.
“Communal spaces can be illustrated as the form of individualized collectivism, and they stand out as highly individualized spaces.” The project explores the duality of space, transitioning from public to private, maintaining a sense of autonomy when engaged in a communal living situation. This new building consists of activities in both public and private spaces, and raises questions about the form of communal spaces.
Various realms of activities are extruded and interlocked together, populating the new building. The two types of public and private realms are overlapping and shifting, showing the increased connectivity that will positively impact the interaction between people. As such, the horizontal and vertical extrusions are creating relationships between different spaces and determining the level of privacy.
The new building attracts people in Gowanus, links and connects them creating new relationships in the community. It will be a new meeting point, a new shelter providing entertainment and a sense of belongings to the Gowanus community. Residents can easily exit from the entities and have easy access to both the community and the autonomy. The new communal housing responses to a widespread tension between individuals and community.
Can negotiation be productive? Venetian Gowanus is an attempt to answer this by suggesting that through spontaneous and controlled interventions of other elements, the “space in between“ can be activated and become socially and ideologically generative, therefore encourage new programs, interactions, and spatial realms.
My project consists of three main components: two levels of living units above and a semi-underground water park that expands to the exterior landscape in the North. Considering the uncertainty of water quality on the site, I decided to turn the structure against the canal, blocking visual and physical connection with the currently toxic water body. The one-hundred years timeline is another exciting variable, to which I responded with a water management system that organically links time to water on the site - the water is only welcomed into the site when it is friendly enough for the community. As a result, the water body becomes a vitally present, constantly changing, yet highly controllable element that is capable of activating the public realm. As the residential units articulate an oscillating “light tunnel“ through spatial negotiation, light from above and water running below unfold the various conditions of the public space, encouraging new possibilities for this community.
Can negotiation be productive? Venetian Gowanus is an attempt to answer this by suggesting that through spontaneous and controlled interventions of other elements, the “space in between“ can be activated and become socially and ideologically generative, therefore encourage new programs, interactions, and spatial realms.
My project consists of three main components: two levels of living units above and a semi-underground water park that expands to the exterior landscape in the North. Considering the uncertainty of water quality on the site, I decided to turn the structure against the canal, blocking visual and physical connection with the currently toxic water body. The one-hundred years timeline is another exciting variable, to which I responded with a water management system that organically links time to water on the site - the water is only welcomed into the site when it is friendly enough for the community. As a result, the water body becomes a vitally present, constantly changing, yet highly controllable element that is capable of activating the public realm. As the residential units articulate an oscillating “light tunnel“ through spatial negotiation, light from above and water running below unfold the various conditions of the public space, encouraging new possibilities for this community.
With flood hazard threatening the area surrounding the Gowanus Canal and the importance of the Pump House at the canal head in treating the polluted water, the project has become crucial in remediating the environmental and living condition for the canal and its larger area. Located near the intersection of industrial zone around the canal and residential zone in the periphery, my building is designed to symbolize the starting point of the revitalization efforts for the larger area, connecting the industrial with the residential zone.
This building continues the proposed greenbelt and works as a water cleaning system for both the residential building and the canal water. The organization of the floor plans follows the rule of placing the most private space at the center and the most public space at the periphery where people circulate from their homes at the building center to the common space at the periphery. The water follows the circulation of humans and treats canal water and stormwater through its biofilter. The treated water will then be pumped upward through the core for residential use and watering vegetation on the terrace on each level.
Calvin Liang: My project considers the question of Life:After Life through a lens of intergenerationality. Gowanus has a rich history of craftsmaking and artisanal tradition which faces a tension with a lack of affordable housing for those who pursue these mediums. This lead me to pursue intergenerationality in Gowanus not only as one that is familial, but also non-familial. I identify a discrete tension of communality and domesticity, and sought to pursue how an architecture can mediate these conditions.
I consider what passage means, and identify the condition of the corner as a tool which negotiates passage and space. I take the condition of a curved and rigid corner and iterate them across a grid with an algorithm. The first 221 iterations shown here reveal how relationships that the corners have with each other inform spatial conditions. Depending on what corner is adjacent to another in a specific order and position, enclosures, figures, and passages are formed.
Diana Smiljkovic: Gowanus Terraces started out with the study of Chantal Mouffe’s Agonism which brought forward the concepts of fluctuation (between private and collective) and productive tension. The single unit is inhabited by 2 precarious workers and the unit fluctuates between shared border, absent border and their unification. Ritual becomes a sub narrative through the project where the space starts to create a choreography of reproduction, the ritualization of banal activity, and celebrating the mundane - this is done through the enfilade.
There is the concept of the private ramp that leads the dweller on a longer route to an entrance through their most private quarters and then the central social core which allows for easy access to each unit as well as the shared spaces between the units. The stepping of the site from water to ground to building is replicated in the terracing of the units which creates an architectural landscape and an axis across - connecting land and water.
Timothy Wong: Gowanus is in the process of undergoing a dramatic transformation. With the re-zoning of this district, a radically different image of Gowanus is proposed – one of promenades, shop fronts and new housing blocks. What is at stake here is gentrification. Not only does it drive away the current residents, it also transforms the character of the place. Gentrification is an idealization of what the place is, pristine and clean, perfect for consumers. However, this removes the rich history of Gowanus as a space that is the consequence of the industries that occupied and are still occupying this place. Hence, this project is an attempt to reject the utopian veneer of the rezoning to reveal the core character of Gowanus – infrastructure.
From the canal, pump house, sewage pipes to the new proposed sewage storage, Gowanus is an infrastructural space. However, these infrastructures are hidden from us, from the inaccessible pump house to the proposed sewage storage below the park - infrastructure is always hidden from view. This project hence attempts to reveal these infrastructural elements across my proposal. With this heightened awareness of infrastructure, this project aims to be the antithesis of the rezoned promenades, parks and luxury big block housing.
Janelle Schmidt: At this moment, there are two opposing views of Brookyln’s Gowanus Canal. For the new residential community, the canal is an opportunity for waterside development, but if you ask the current trade community, the canal is one of the most polluted bodies of water in the United States.
I’m employing this binary as a spatial construct with the goal of feeling two spaces at once. The canal’s existing pump station is adapted to a core maker space and new residential units envelope around it.
If you’re a new resident, you must be tied to the existing artist community in some way, and the architecture enforces this constraint because it is communal living. The private residence contains bedrooms and baths, the public market is the workplace, and the semi-private band in-between contains kitchens and living areas.
With hope, maybe development can expand communities rather than replace them.
